Some Tips on How to Make
Your Public Service Announcement Great
by Stephen Mantell*

Here are a couple of tips which you might keep in mind: Everyone can be a producer because every one of us has seen ideas on television which have affected us and caught our attention, made us laugh, or frightened us enough to sit up and pay attention to the message.

Your Message

Whether you're making a print ad (poster), or a 2-minute, 60-second, or even a 5-second announcement, you need to communicate a message the same way an advertiser does who's selling a product. The challenges and the techniques are similar. Express your idea simply and powerfully. Here's what I mean:

"Teenagers shouldn't drink and drive because statistics show that drunk driving is the leading cause of accidental death and injury in this age group."

The statement may be true, but your audience is going to stop paying attention about half-way through because the statement is filled with important details but without much humanity. What's the most focused, targeted way to express this message?

"When teenagers who drink get behind the wheel of a car, friends die."

Now this uses the same underlying information, but here it's more visual, more frightening and more compelling. What's the difference between the two statements above? The second statement is very visual: "When teenagers who drink get behind the wheel of a car" contains two visual images: teenagers drinking and a drunken teen opening a car door and sliding in behind the wheel. The statement "drunk driving is the leading cause of accidental death and injury" is true, but it's not as hard-hitting as "friends die." "Friends die" is a more powerful statement. It's also brutally visual.

With a highly focused message, you can build a stronger PSA, whether you use graphics, live video, animation or even just audio. And yes, it's more manipulative, too. As the producer of your PSA, you have to decide whether you're willing to manipulate your audience. Is your goal -- warning teens not to drink and drive and important enough so that you create a message that may frighten them, or make them laugh at the wrong thing, or laugh at the wrong time?

Picture This

For example, if you show a bobble-head moose doll on a car dashboard nodding approvingly over and over, that can be funny; but before your audience can laugh -- or while they're laughing -- replace that image with one that reveals that that bobble-head doll is the only thing still moving after a terrible car crash. Youíve used very simple images to express a very powerful point.

Another Tip

With a limited amount of screen time, how are you going to catch your audience's attention? Your audience is bombarded with images all day, every day. One way to get their attention is with a compelling or unusual image.

A talking duck has nothing to do with life insurance but it caught people's attention and now Aflac cannot get rid of that duck. Likewise with Geico's gecko.There's a very famous PSA created many years ago about what drugs do to a drug-user's brain. It was so effective because it used an image that would seem to have nothing to do with the subject: two eggs frying in a pan. Maybe it was the sound effect of the frying eggs sizzling that made it so brutal. But the spot "this is your brain on drugs" -- stuck in people's minds. It was easy and inexpensive to make and it was seen by millions of people. As you develop ideas for your PSA, take advantage of images and sounds that will cause your audience to sit up and pay attention to the simple, powerful message you have to communicate.

Good Luck!

*Stephen Mantell is a writer-producer who has written and produced PSA campaigns for television on a range of subjects including spots about staying in school and a humorous campaign about the frustrations of growing up. He has written and produced serious documentaries for museums, documentaries for schools and written fictional series for TV. He lives in here in Chappaqua.